Market growth in consumer electronics generates a lot of environmental burdens including contamination due to scarce materials, greenhouse effect, and e-waste management challenges. Eco-design is a promising approach to reduce the environmental effect of electronics by incorporating sustainability concerns into product design process. However, most approaches do not overcome the unsustainable use such as frequently replacing a device before end of life.
Thus, the design of electronic parts and accessories play a key role in sustainable behavior for many types of products such as, but not limited to, consumer electronics, appliances, and buildings. To date, limited guidance has been developed to help designers create a product with a reduced environmental impact. However, the DWI method does not promise affecting how user thinks.
A much more effective design strategy is to affect the human thinking system in a sustainable way. In this application, we employ a Sustainable Behavior Design (SBD) framework to use common design concepts to affect the human thinking system to increase sustainable awareness among the users. Alternatively, it can be adapted to promote sustainable behaviors among users in an unconscious manor. The SBD framework is demonstrated using a case study on a smartphone which can be applied to tablets, pocket PCs, PDAs, laptops, or personal digital assistants. The reimagined smartphone design integrates solutions to increase life cycle of the device.
A group of novel designs for smartphones and their accessories and packaging is presented in this application. These designs help preventing phone loss, preventing over charging of batteries, decreasing packaging waste and encouraging sustainable behavior among users.